On this special episode of Post Mortem, Host Anne-Marie Green sits down with Melissa G. Moore, who at 15, discovered that her father was the prolific serial killer known as Happy Face. She’s joined by Jennifer Cacicio, the Executive Producer of a new Paramount+ series, HAPPY FACE, that is inspired by Melissa’s true-life story and stars Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid. They discuss Melissa’s evolving relationship with her father, having her brain scanned to determine if she was a psychopath, and how she has connected with other relatives of killers. Don't miss the two-episode premiere of HAPPY FACE, streaming March 20 exclusively on Paramount+, with new episodes every Thursday. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the guests on this special episode of Post Mortem?
I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green, and today I'm sitting down with Melissa G. Moore, the daughter of serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, and Jennifer Casicio, the executive producer of the new series Happy Face, starring Anna Lee Ashford as Melissa and Dennis Quaid as her father, which premieres with two episodes on Thursday, March 20th, exclusively on Paramount+.
Chapter 2: How did Melissa G. Moore discover her father's true identity?
So Happy Face is inspired by the true life story of Melissa G. Moore. At 15, Melissa discovered that her beloved father, Keith Jesperson, was the prolific serial killer known as Happy Face. As an adult, she changed her name and guarded that secret, all while her father continues to be serving a life sentence in prison.
Jesperson is responsible for killing at least eight women in the early 1990s and was dubbed the happy face killer because he signed his letters to the media and law enforcement with a smiley face. And Melissa, I listened to the podcast because this was a podcast before it became this TV series. And that's what the TV series is based on. I want to thank you for joining us and I want to dig into it.
So thank you so much, guys. Thank you for having us.
Yes. Thank you so much.
Chapter 3: What was Melissa's experience visiting her father in prison?
So, Melissa, your father was arrested in 1995 for the murder of his girlfriend, Julie Winningham. You were only 15 at the time. He goes to trial and then he confesses to a number of other murders. He's recanted when it comes to some of them. But what was it like at 15 to wrestle with this realization that your father is not the person you thought he was?
It was blindsiding, obviously, to hear that he was arrested for the murder of Julie Winningham. At that time, he wasn't known as a happy face serial killer. He was dad, and he was a suspect that was charged with the crime of Julie Winningham's murder. So I went to the prison to see if I could look him in the eyes and see the monster that everybody's saying he is.
So I show up to the jail with my aunt and I remember his hair being shaved. He had really lush, thick hair and he was very vain about it and proud about it. And so it was shocking to see him completely shaven and shackled. When I saw him, I wanted to see if I could see the color. And the first thing he said to me is, Missy, my best advice is to change your last name.
And that's when I knew he was admitting guilt and that this was all this was true. So I, as a teenager, I just started sobbing and crying because at that point, my dad was my savior. He, he was our financial hero. My mom was destitute financially. And when he would roll into town, he would bring groceries like off of his truck. He would bring boxes of, of like pop tarts, like
That's like a memory. It's weird what sticks out in your head. Like to this day, I go to the grocery store and I see the Pop-Tarts and I'm like, I don't want those. Like it's his association, right? You know? Yeah. Yeah. I only have good memories. Well, not maybe all good memories, but majority of them really positive memories growing up.
Jen, I want to ask you just how did you come to know Melissa and her story?
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Chapter 4: How did Jennifer Cacicio get involved with Melissa's story?
Yeah. First of all, I never knew that he said you should change your last name. You never told me that. Season two. I'm going to put that in the flashback. So I just listened to the podcast like any other fan. I was working on a show called Your Honor at the time and I had a long commute, like an hour each way.
And so I listened to podcasts every morning in the car and I listened to, you know, tons of true crime. And so I I listened just to the first episode and called my agent immediately and said, you know, does someone have the rights to this? I want to write it. It would be such a good show. You know, I have to have it.
And the producers on Your Honor were Liz Glotzer and then Robert and Michelle King. And so I had gotten to know them and I was looking for a project to develop with them. So I went into work and I said, I'm going to try to get this podcast. And so I I was lucky enough that Melissa trusted me with it in the end.
So, Melissa, I don't want to give too much away in terms of how the TV series unfolds. But obviously you're here talking with us now about who your father is. But what it did occur to me, you know, you could have stopped just at the podcast episode. And been like, OK, I got it out of my system. So I'm curious why you didn't choose to do that and why you're still speaking about it.
Well, the more I talk about my story, the more I connect with other families that have a killer or a perpetrator in their family. And it's surprising to me when I came forward with my story originally. That was quite shocking because I felt alone. And then all of a sudden my inbox just started getting filled up.
And whenever I would see the subject line in my inbox say, I'm just like you, I knew it was authentic. I would open up the email and it would be a story. I'm So and so my family member is this person. Here's a link to the news that, you know, to validate like this is who I'm related to. And thank you for telling me your story. I actually get them daily.
Just like today, I got a message from a woman whose husband tried to burn her alive. And so it's also survivors of crime. And family members related to the victims.
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Chapter 5: Why does Melissa continue to share her story?
When I was thinking about you and your relationship with your dad, when he shows up, he's like he's Santa. He's bringing food. He's bringing toys. But he's also bringing you trinkets. It turns out that these trinkets are not just things for you, but they're things for him, too.
Well, I think that's where Jen really took the liberty of the true story. Jen, I'll let you lead off with that.
Yeah, that was one thing that we definitely took a bit of liberty with. I knew that he brought change and little trinkets and candy, but the idea that it linked to a murder is...
invented why did you choose to include it so in any places where we took liberties I always kind of checked in with myself to make sure that we were still sticking to the spirit of each and every character and the spirit of the story and you know it's one of those things where I know that in real life Melissa has felt extreme guilt and shame and connectedness to her father's crimes and
And so it was a way of kind of linking those things in a visual way and in a concrete way for the audience.
There's a symbolism here, right? And it's that, Melissa, you have all of these memories of your father, and then you get these additional memories as you start to learn about his movements, the places he went, the women that were killed. And so I wonder, like, you must want to keep the good memories, right? Is there a way to keep the good and ignore the bad?
That's my vulnerability, though. So my vulnerability is wanting to hold on to the good and the idea of this wonderful dad, because that is the weak point for me and the stronghold my father has to me, which you will see in the series. It's an emotional, toxic entanglement. He preys upon my desire to have that loving father again. And when he lures me in and pulls me in, that's when he strikes.
I would receive letters from my father in prison, phone calls from strangers. He constantly was trying to stay in communication with me. And people always ask me, why do you keep these letters from your dad? And I couldn't bear to open them because I know he's going to go after my heart. And so I just didn't want to read them.
Right. I want to play a little bit from the series. There's a scene where the character, Melissa, and a TV producer interview Keith Jesperson in prison. I want to share that clip.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of trinkets in the Happy Face series?
We're here for the truth, Keith. So, go ahead and tell us. I will, as soon as Missy here tells me why she's acting like she's God's gift when she's the one that benefited from every killing that I did.
Excuse me?
Every time a woman took her last breath, you got presents. Time with Daddy. I needed to be around you after, because it kept me out of the darkness.
So that scene, I think, encapsulates exactly what you were talking about. So I found myself as I was watching it, Melissa, thinking, does he want her to love him? Or does he want just to get attention?
I have a theory that he thinks... That I am a part of him, because what we know about narcissists is that they only self serve. So if I'm an appendage of him, then that might evoke why he does the actions he does. That's just my theory.
That's fascinating. Jennifer, you're sort of agreeing with that.
Yeah, I think that's how I see him. And obviously, I haven't met him. But, you know, when Melissa didn't know what to do with all those letters, she gave them to me and I read them all. And they're really what informed Keith's character. His character is really Melissa's version of him and who he is to her.
And to me, really, season one is about, you know, can you love a monster or what it means to love a monster? And that's really the question that we're exploring.
Welcome back. One of the things that you see in the series is the attraction and interest that many people have in serial killers. And in the first few episodes that I saw, you sort of see the gamut, right? The people who are just interested in true crime, like a lot of people who are going to be listening to this podcast. The people who think they can save the serial killer.
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Chapter 7: How does the series explore the theme of loving a monster?
The people who are drawn to the morbid. I wonder if this is something, Jennifer, that you were sensitive to, and even Melissa, in telling this story.
Yeah, I definitely see this as a fictionalized, inspired by story. And I think it could ask some bigger questions about true crime. And I think there's just been plenty of serial killer shows where you're just... It's all about the killer, you know, and it's all about the psychology of the killer. And we're all interested in that for obvious reasons.
But I just hadn't seen a show that's exploring everybody and everything around that, you know, and how can we get at some of these more nuanced things.
elements of these crimes and all these other people that are affected in different ways I always tell people you know yes it's about generational trauma and the daughter of a serial killer and facing your demons and but like it's not a bummer it's fun to watch you know
There's a lot of levity in that. Some of my favorite scenes and what I love about Annalie is that there's the episode where my dad in prison has a girlfriend, which happened in real life, by the way. My dad had a lot of women writing to him and he would invoke these women to reach out to me and try to have a relationship with me. What do you think that was about? Yeah. Oh, I don't know.
It's hard to say what that's about. But I found it to be really humorous because it's so absurd. It's so absurd. It's funny. And so I like that Annalie, she got that. And so there's moments of levity. Yeah, it's how we cope. Yes.
So what was it like to see Annalie Ashford portraying you on camera? Like, I have to say, when I looked at her and looked at you, I thought, oh, my God. I mean, they really got an actress that looks very similar to you. You guys could almost be sisters.
I think she's incredible. I've really appreciated how she respected me as a person. And I also really appreciated her sensitivity to the people that she meets in the series, because I feel like in my own life, I feel like I care and I feel like she portrayed how I care.
And then what about Dennis Quaid portraying your father?
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Chapter 8: How do Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid portray their characters?
And I think that gave him the freedom to do what he wanted because he had asked me, you know, should I try to meet Keith? And I said, no. And he said, I don't really want to and I don't really want to. So he just decided to do his own thing. And I shared some of the letters with him and I shared some of my notes from what Melissa had told me. and answered his questions.
And then he kind of just did his own thing.
Melissa, in 2018, you hosted a podcast also titled Happy Face. I listened to it. And one of the things that really stuck with me over the years was the episode where you get a brain scan. You are really curious about the nature of psychopathy. And you wonder, I mean, am I made of the same stuff? Do I have the same DNA? Is it nature? Is it nurture?
Well, I wanted to get the head scan because I heard from Dr. Fallon. He's a world-renowned expert and researcher on psychopaths and is one himself. And he has this incredible story of how he discovered he's a psychopath by doing
looking at the brain scans of criminals violent criminals and for one of his studies he had somebody put his brain scan in mixed in with a whole bunch of violent criminals and he put it up on the board and he's like oh here's the psychopath and it's his brain scan but um i found him really fascinating because there's this negative association with psychopaths and
If you're a psychopath, you're, you know, it's kind of linked to being a killer, but it's actually not the case. He talks about how psychopaths are necessary in our civilization. But he leads me down, if you recall, listening to it, he leads me down a long path of like drawing out after he looks at my head scan to see if I'm a psychopath. Right. And I'm just on edge.
And then he's like, and you're not a psychopath. I'm like, OK, great. Thank you. Thanks for that. Now I can breathe. But for my kids, they were really interested in that as well. They never let me on to think that it was important to them to have that. But they were being bullied in school. And people were saying your grandfather is a serial killer. Because at that point, I was...
working in the media and with public with my story and so that is the dark side of coming forward is you share your story to be a light to others but then you're also a target yeah um and then inadvertently my children um and so they would tell me like they're so glad that they got that scientific proof because it gave them ammo against the bully saying we're not like him right yeah yeah
That's interesting. In 2018, you actually went on the Dr. Oz show. And there's kind of like a fictionalized version of this in the series, the Dr. Gregg show. But I want to play a clip from that episode.
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